Yes ... and the reason so many of them end up in hell anyway is that they really don't believe what they're trying to sell to the rest of us. Further, the reason Americans are so "popular" in the remainder of the world has to do with the fact that they frequently travel about both as private individuals and as representatives of our government, industry, or culture, telling people elsewhere how WRONG their ancient cultural views of the world, both physical and spiritual, are. The image outside the U.S. of those Americans, extrapolated to represent ALL Americans, is that they lack the humility to respect anyone else's culture, religion, history, etc. That compresses into "they don't respect anyone else." My suspicion is that many of those promoters of American-style religion, which is clearly a business more than a belief system, don't really believe anything specific, other than that they have to convince everyone around them that they do. It's no secret, however, that if one preaches but doesn't act consistently with what they preach, they're just a fake. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gene Ehrich" <gehrich(a)tampabay.rr.com> To: <classiccmp(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Friday, November 09, 2001 8:29 PM Subject: Re: absurdity ---------------